Average employment per own account establishment was 1.33 and that per Establishment with hired workers was 4.38. Overall, average employment per establishment was 2.41 persons. Average employment per establishment which was 2.88 in 1990 had come down to 2.75 in 1998 and further gone down to 2.41 in 2005.

Distribution of establishments by size class of employments revealed that around 95% of establishments were having 1 to 5 workers, 3.42% of establishments employed 6 to 9 workers and only 1.51% of establishments employed 10 workers and above.

Among the States maximum growth rate of establishment during 1998-2005 was  oserved in Mizoram (9.71%) followed closely by Tripura (8.88%), Kerala (8.69%) and Tamil Nadu (8.44%). Highest growth rate of employment was, however, observed in Jammu & Kashmir (6.82%) followed by Andhra Pradesh (5.87%), Kerala (5.86%) and Haryana (5.35%).

The growth rate of employment during 1998 to 2005 was of the order of 2.78% per annum (3.88% in rural and 1.70% in urban). This is considerably higher than the growth rate (1.75%) observed during 1990 to 1998.

Out of the total employment of 100.9 million 78.3 million (37.6 in rural and 40.7 million in urban) were male, 20.2 million (13.0 million in rural and 7.2 million inurban) were female and around 2.4 (1.5 million in rural and 0.9 million in urban) million were hildren.

Around 54.4 million persons (53.9%) were hired workers and the remaining 46.5 million were own account workers. Out of these hired workers 41.3 million were male, 11.6 mllion were female and 1.5 million were children.

About

The Central Statistical Organization (CSO) in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation conducted the Fifth Economic Census during 2005-06 in collaboration with Directorate of Economics and Statistics throughout the country in all the States and Union Territories. It covers all establishments as per National Industrial Classification (NIC) – 2004 excluding crop production and plantation. The field work was completed in all the States/UTs during the year except Bihar and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, due to Tsunami rehabilitation work and it was completed by early March, 2006. Economic Census provides not only an updated sampling frame for detailed follow-up surveys but also provides basic entrepreneurial data on number of establishments/enterprises and employment therein relating to different sectors of the economy including unorganized sector for the for the purpose of planning, development etc.

Incidentally, the first Economic Census was conducted in 1977 followed by 1980, 1990 and 1998.